Story originally written as a response at r/WritingPrompts (u/PrimitivePrism)
Prompt:
The world has been discovered by an alien planet. They require bananas for peace. You are a lowly banana farmer with a vision for peace.
Response:
Of course it would happen the year after the world’s Cavendish banana crops were wiped out. For decades biologists had warned of the risk of having Earth’s premier banana sharing a near-identical genome, making them susceptible to mass annihilation if they were struck by the correct disease. As a species, there are admittedly a lot of dire warnings we don’t heed, but really, no one could have imagined that a freak coronavirus mutation would lead to it infecting bananas (of course, it was quickly dubbed the Chiquitavirus, and its disease CHIVID-25). The result was certain death of the afflicted Cavendish banana tree. And it hit all Cavendish banana trees.
That wasn’t enough to satisfy this fickle universe, though, because then the ships appeared in our solar system. They had sent their message in advance, so it reached us just as their craft were detected near Jupiter. They’d been picking up our broadcasts for decades, you see, and worked out our languages. They were apparent fans of a certain mid 2000s Gwen Stefani hit, however, so their message was sent in English. It was published throughout the world’s media as follows:
>This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
>For real though, we want this shit. Bananas. All of them. You’ll provide us with bananas or you’ll be exterminated. Bananas = peace. C u soon.
Half the world went into shock. The other half was immediately divided by those calling for Earth’s militaries to mount a joint offensive by any means necessary, while still others were convinced it was an elaborate hoax by the infamous hacker 4-Chan.
When the craft did arrive a few days later, their first act was a show of force, in which they vaporized 80% of the Siberian forests in a matter of minutes, having determined that there were no bananas being cultivated there. Earth’s military option was quickly dropped.
Then the world turned to me and my small hobby garden in Thailand where I grow five types of relatively rare–and therefore largely disease resistant–bananas. I’ve made a total of perhaps 30,000 baht profit off my minor sales of these bananas in a decade of this post-retirement project–around $1000 USD. Suddenly I had world leaders assembled at my doorstep, conveying to me that the fate of humanity may very well lay in my hands, and would I use my expertise to lead a massive agricultural operation to produce enough of my beloved rare bananas to please the newly-arrived overlords?
I thought about it for a while. I ate a banana. I considered my family and the human race and our entire collective history and the future we might write together. I visited the temple down the road and sat in silent meditation before the Buddha statue. I came home, picked another banana, ate it, and then returned to the tent city of leaders and influential scientists springing up in the neighboring field, and told them, “K. I’ll do it.”
The global expression of elation cannot be understated. I was offered every monetary and labor resource imaginable. In the space of a week, the entire Khorat Plateau was turned into a banana plantation, excepting the homes and infrastructure there, of course, and with the farmers who had once toiled on that land paid exceedingly handsome sums for their property. It provided a wonderful abundance of jobs, and bigwig corporate figures from Bangkok even quit their cushy office gigs to come join the effort under my direction, knowing full well that a failure to produce enough bananas to satisfy would leave them without employment anyway–without bodies, for that matter.
The day finally came when the delivery was to be made to the mothership. For our ease, the overlords flew it to within a couple kilometers of the edge of the plantation. A portal the size of a mountain opened in its center, and a blue-white tractor beam of immense proportions lit a swath of our green earth brighter than daylight. It was determined, through official communication channels with the overlords, that I should be drawn onboard with the first batch of bananas to present the harvest.
So I went, drawn into the sky alongside 80 shipping containers full of beautiful orange, reddish, yellow and purple bananas. When gravity reclaimed its hold on me I found myself and the containers on the floor of massive circular hall, bright lights piercing from the walls of all sides. Toward me, followed by its entourage, crawled the interplanetary Ambassador on its dextrous crab-like appendages, its four enormous yellow eyes studying me with what I hoped was friendliness.
“I have long studied your language, waiting for this day,” it told me in graceful Thai, mandibles vibrating in an excellent mimicry of human vocal cords.
“It’s an honor, more or less,” I responded. “My pleasure to deliver this batch of the goods.”
My eyes had adjusted to the bright light and I could now see that there were many thousands of his kind gathered in nooks along the walls, watching in anticipation, yellow eyeballs bulging in their keratinous sockets.
The Ambassador looked into the yawning mouth of the first crate, and carefully selected the finest banana it could see, grasping it in the twining feelers at the end of a claw and lifting it into the air before his audience.
A rumbling murmur that I took for awe shook the air.
The Ambassador peeled the banana with his feelers, and I admired with what skill and speed it got job done. Finally, it brought the fruit into the cavernous dark maw between its mandibles and took a bite.
I swear, the thing didn’t have eyebrows, but I saw it wince. The ship held its breath. Outside, I knew, all of humanity held its breath as well.
“This . . .” said the Ambassador, and trailed off in seeming confusion. “Damn . . . ” It looked around at the others. “Stefani wasn’t kidding. This is shit.”
